A Thought For The Week Of September 26, 2016

"The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us." (1 John 1:2) The opening verses of John's Gospel are to me some of the most meaningful verses to be found in the Bible. We're less familiar with the Letters of John than with the Gospel of John, and that's unfortunate, because the first few verses of 1 John are also rich in meaning for us. In Jesus is life. The two are inseparable. That's a basic witness of Christian faith, and it's one of the foundational messages of the New Testament that's spoken of in great detail at the start of 1 John: in Jesus there is life that is available to all. The opening of 1 John doesn't go into great detail about the life Jesus gives. Rather, it's a form of testimony: "we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us." These words are essentially making the same claims for Jesus that are made in the opening of John's Gospel - that Jesus (the Christ, the Word, the Son) has always existed, and that all things have come through him. The eternal nature of Jesus is what we claim as his followers - we have fellowship not only with each other, this tells us, but also with the Father and with the Son. And if God is eternal, then by being in fellowship with God we gain that eternal life for ourselves. It seems to me that what John is saying is that our "fellowship" with God imparts to us that most basic characteristic - God's eternal nature becomes our eternal nature. Jesus spoke a lot about "life" during his ministry. He said "I am the life." He promised abundant life to all who followed him. Life that never ends. This is Jesus' promise to us, and our relationship or fellowship with God through him is our source of eternal life. It remains for us to speak about this life that we have encountered and claimed, just as John speaks about it to us. This verse reminds us to testify to and proclaim what we know to be true, and one of the most basic things we know is that in Jesus there is abundant and eternal life.

September 25 2016 sermon: How To Use Wealth Wisely

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

(1 Timothy 6:6-19)

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     It would have been in 1992 or 1993. Back when I was just a wee lad. Actually, I was a student at the time and I was serving my ministry internship at Central Avenue United Church in Fort Erie. As you can tell, I obviously went into the ministry when I was but a boy. On one particular Sunday I had preached a sermon based on one of the texts of the New Testament that talks about money and seems to offer a warning to rich people. After the service, I was approached by a rather well to do member of the congregation. He said to me, “Steve, it was an interesting sermon, but I want to ask you why the Bible is always so hard on rich people. We can be Christians too, you know.” When a well to do parishioner challenges you on what the Bible says about rich people, it's hard to know exactly how to respond, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t remember exactly what I said to him in response. But his question was very sincere and from the heart. He was truly hurt by the perception that Jesus didn’t care much for people with money. As I said, I don’t remember exactly what my response was, but I suspect I would have alluded in some way to this Scripture passage which we just read which points out that it isn’t money, but the love of money, that’s the real problem. There are a lot of ways of defining the problem. “The more you have, the more you have to worry about.” “The more you have, the more you want.” Things – whether it’s money or anything else – can easily take over your life.

     The real issue that this passage seems to be getting at is contentment. Paul holds that up in one of his letters when he writes that he had learned to be content whatever his circumstances. Contentment, I think, has been largely lost in our society. To some people, I think that being content has come to be seen as a weakness or a failing. We’re not supposed to be content. We’re always supposed to be striving for more, to be better. We can’t be satisfied with the way things are. We have to have the latest of everything, and we’re constantly being bombarded with ads telling us that there’s something new we should want. Some people can remember when it wasn’t this way. Over the years I’ve spoken to people who grew up in the Depression who’ve told me that they never even realized that they were poor, and so they were happy. They only learned later that they hadn’t had very much. I can remember growing up and as a child having access to about seven TV channels and being happy enough with them. Now, we have hundreds to choose from. Do we need them? How could we possibly do without the Food Channel! It just seems that we’re living in a time where unless we’re always getting more, we’re missing out, and so we never have enough. It’s an attitude that’s so foreign to the New Testament, which has the nerve to speak to our twenty-first century mindset and tell us to be content. As our passage today said, “we brought nothing into the world [and] we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.” No I-pods; no satellite TV; no computers; no cell phones – just food and clothing. Wow. What are we supposed to do: become monks?

     Learning to be content is one of the greatest challenges of life in the society we live in. When this passage was written, perhaps it was easy to speculate that people could be content merely with having food and clothing. You could say, after all, that those are the bare necessities of life – and the truth is that for a lot of people even food and clothing are luxuries of a kind. But most of us gathered here today don't have a lot of concerns about food and clothing. Our challenge is that we want and expect more – and we're being told repeatedly that we should be wanting and expecting more. So this passage confronts us and it confronts our basic outlook on life. How many of those “extras” I mentioned a couple of minutes ago would we be willing to do without? And the related question perhaps is how much of what we have do we really need? That's the challenge for a Christian – and especially for a Christian who has “stuff.” Jesus never said that Christians couldn't be wealthy, or that wealthy people were any less (or more) loved by God than poor people. His teaching and the teaching of the New Testament is that it's easy for our wealth – for all our “stuff” - to get in the way of our relationship with God and with those around us. Some people speak of wealth as being a blessing from God, and sometimes some Christians (those who are adherents to what's become known as the “prosperity gospel”) think that being blessed by wealth is an end in itself; that wealth is the mark of God’s love for us. But if wealth and the things we possess are blessings, then they're blessings only as far as we use them to bless others – because isn't that the ultimate purpose of Christian faith? To be primarily concerned with others rather than with ourselves?

     It's too easy for us to become servants of our things or of our money, rather than being servants of God and of one another. To fall into that trap is to fall victim to a form of idolatry. That's what Martin Luther meant when he wrote that “Not only the adoration of images is idolatry, but also trust in one’s own righteousness, works and merits, and putting confidence in riches and power. As the latter is the commonest, so it is also the most noxious.” Putting trust in riches and power is the “most noxious” perhaps, because it's the most uncertain; because these things perhaps more than anything else give us an illusion of security, but they’re also things that can be taken away in the blink of an eye – and yet merely having them causes us to want more. And that, I think, is what this passage is really addressing – the desire to always want more of what we have, rather than being willing to risk what we have for the benefit of others – and the reality, too often, is that when a person has a lot, they often get obsessed with simply not losing all the things that they don't really need. There's no contentment in that mindset; there's no sense of stewardship (stewardship is not saving everything and turning it into more, it's using what we have as wisely as possible in the service of God); there's no willingness to sacrifice. Contentment is actually the key to being a true and faithful servant of Christ – and perhaps here is where we see gospel and society most at odds with each other. It's not whether or not you can say The Lord's Prayer in schools – it's the fact that Christian faith says “you should be content” and society says “you should want more.” It's a clash of values. It's a matter of ethics.

     As I said, I don't remember exactly how I responded to the parishioner in Fort Erie who questioned what he perceived to be the Bible's attack on the rich. And I wonder, perhaps, what motivated his perception. Was he demonstrating a discomfort with the idea that at least from God's perspective and the perspective of faith his wealth was for the purpose of serving others rather than simply for his own comfort? I'll never know, I guess. I do know that money and wealth can be a trap – an idol, even, as Martin Luther said. And I do know that we have to always confront the desire for more, more and more, until we learn the secret of being content to have only what we need, and recognize any more that we have as an opportunity to serve God and others.

A Thought For The Week Of September 19, 2016

"The precepts of the Lord are right,  giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes." (Psalm 19:8) If you were going to sit down and make a list of the qualities that faith in God should bring into your life, you could do worse than starting with what's mentioned in this single verse: joy and light. There are others, of course. Peace jumps into my mind. There's contentment and thankfulness. Paul, of course, offers a list of what he describes as the fruit of the Spirit. These are all qualities that one could argue should be characteristics of a life lived in Christian faith and in relationship with Jesus. But maybe joy and light would be the best to start with. God's precepts bring joy, we're told. Precepts would be general principles to live by. The point, I suppose, is that by living broadly in the way that God intends, we find joy - which might also include contentment and peace. In this context, I don't think that "joy" means precisely "happiness." I'm not sure God or Scripture ever really promises "happiness." Happiness is an emotional state that's generally dependent on our circumstances at any given time. Joy is a spiritual state that manifests itself in things like contentment and peace. And the verse then moves from "precepts" to "commands," which might be the move from living according to general principles revealed by God to living specifically according to God's expectations. Learning what God expects of us brings us light - wisdom, or knowledge; knowledge of God and knowledge of the world and even knowledge of ourselves. I don't believe we're thinking of God's commands in the sense of "do this or you'll be mercilessly punished" (although some speak of it this way.) Instead, I think we're speaking of understanding God's expectations, which gives us the wisdom to know when we haven't lived up to those expectations, which also gives us the wisdom to claim God's grace. Ultimately, for me as a Christian, everything has to point to God's grace. So, to me, a verse such as this reminds me that if I strive to live as God wants me to live, I will find myself content in the knowledge that I know not only God - but that I will also discover God's amazing grace active in my life.

If I Were In Charge Of Toronto Conference

The Sub-executive of Toronto Conference met last week to consider the recommendation of the Conference Interview Committee that Rev. Gretta Vosper be placed on the Discontinued Service List (Disciplinary.) Waiting for the decision of the Toronto Conference sub-executive on whether or not to proceed with that is a bit like waiting for Santa Claus - but not near as much fun! Anyway, to pass the time I started to think about what I would do if I were the sub-executive - if I were the United Church's Archbishop of Toronto.

First, I'd acknowledge that the United Church of Canada is partly responsible for this mess. We allowed a community of faith (in a sense) to organize at West Hill around a set of beliefs that wasn't consistent with United Church doctrine or liturgical practice - and we did nothing for years. That being the case, a compromise somewhere between the DSL and just going on as always isn't entirely out of order. If I were making decisions (which I'm thankfully not) here would be my seven fold report:

(1) The recommendations of the Conference Interview Committee should not be acted upon at this time.

(2) Gretta is to make no further public statements which call the faith commitment of her colleagues into question by suggesting that "most" ministers agree with her or that "unbelieving clergy" are all over. She is also to acknowledge publicly that she has no solid evidence supporting the statements she has made in the past about the level of support that exists for her.

(3) If there are areas of United Church doctrine, polity or liturgical practice with which Gretta disagrees and desires to change, she - like all United Church members - is to work through the normal processes and structures of the church (ie, proposals, remits and church courts) rather than advocating for change through the media (ie, her challenge to the then Moderator to not pray for victims of religiously inspired violence.)

(4) Since both Gretta and the West Hill congregation are part of the United Church of Canada, and through the United Church of Canada a part of the wider Christian community, they are to ensure that the sacraments of the church are made properly and regularly available (including ecumenically accepted baptism, administered in the name of the triune God, specifically "the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.")

(5) Since both Gretta and the West Hill congregation are a part of the United Church of Canada, and since the United Church of Canada recognizes the Bible as authoritative and as its primary standard, the congregation is to reflect this in its public worship by at the very least printing in its Order of Worship a biblical text supporting, explaining or reflecting upon the theme of that week's worship service.

(6) A Pastoral Charge supervisor will be appointed, specifically to ensure that (4) and (5) are being complied with. The need for supervision will be reviewed on an annual basis and can be discontinued if both Gretta and the West Hill congregation co-operate in the implementation of (4) and (5).

(7) In the event that these conditions fail to be implemented, the original recommendation of the Conference Interview Committee can be reconsidered.

That's what I'd do if I were running the show. I'm not, of course.

September 18, 2016 sermon: Say What?

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

(Luke 16:1-13)

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     This parable has been described as the most confusing, the most puzzling and the most baffling parable that Jesus ever spoke – which might explain why my first reaction to it after starting to reflect on it earlier this week was: “Say what?” I mean - seriously – did I hear that right? I need to go over those words again: “... his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Say what? The dishonest manager got commended? It just doesn't sound very Jesus-like. We're not supposed to be commending dishonest managers. As I was reading what various commentators had said about this parable I came across a phrase I had never heard before: “homiletical dread.” It means that most preachers dread the thought of having to preach about this parable. And I understand. I mean, I'm as aware as anyone that the Bible is full of unsavoury characters: rascals, rogues and scalliwags aplenty you might say. And that's being kind. But they usually aren't the heroes of the story, and they're generally not held out as examples to be followed. They're supposed to be the anti-heroes; the ones who allow the stars of the show, so to speak, to shine bright. But then we come to Luke 16, and this story that's often called (appropriately) “The Parable Of The Dishonest Manager.” It's the story of the manager of an estate who's so bad at what he does that eventually, when he's called to account by his master, he literally has to cook the books and he decides to change the bottom lines on all the debts that are owed to the master. He drops some debts by 20%, others by 50%. (I wish this guy was the holder of my mortgage!) His theory apparently was that the debtors of his master would be so happy to get a discount that they would gladly welcome him into their homes and feed him and care for him after he got fired for his incompetency and his dishonesty. If you ask me, that's pretty wacky reasoning. It's no wonder that Jesus once said that the purpose of speaking in parables was so that some wouldn't be able to understand. With this one, he may have had me in mind!

          I can't imagine that Jesus was really intending to commend the manager's dishonesty. But I will concede that Jesus often used stories about scoundrels to make a point about what God's like and what we should be like: think of the judge who would only give a poor widow her due because she kept pestering him, or the person who wouldn't budge from his bed to help welcome a stranger until his door was beaten on repeatedly, or the fellow who found a treasure in someone's field and then went out and bought the field at a low price without saying anything about the treasure. Each of those examples uses a person of questionable character to tell us something about God – but none of them tell us that God is unjust, or that God gets annoyed with us because we ask for too much, or that God encourages us to cheat on business deals. Instead, in those examples, Jesus is saying in a humourous and interesting way, that if a reluctant judge can still give justice or a grumpy person can get up in the middle of the night to help, then how much more will God help us? Or Jesus is saying that if a man will go so far as cheating on a business deal just to obtain a treasure he found in someone else's field, then how much more effort should we put into serving God? We might call today's parable “The Parable Of The Dishonest Manager,” but I'm not sure that it's really about the manager's honesty or dishonesty; the issue is whether “the children of the light” (that's us) are really shrewd, clever, committed and wise when it comes to our faith. Do we really use what we've been given by God to the best advantage? Are we as anxious to secure our relationship with God as the dishonest manager was to ensure his future in the world? Are we willing to change the bottom line, so that faith isn't a matter of a simple balance sheet where everything adds up perfectly, but rather that faith becomes a recognition that God gives us more than we can ever give back, and so we can allow God's blessings to us to overflow to others? Maybe that's the key to understanding this.

     The passage ends with Jesus' famous warning that you cannot serve both God and wealth, or God and money. Too many faithful people try to do that, which is likely one reason that so many people don't like being reminded of the fact that the church has financial needs – that just reminds us of our torn loyalties. And what happens too often is that we Christians – who speak of life as God intended it, who talk about the depth and breadth and power of God's love and of how we need to share that love – end up settling for the most mediocre things within our buildings, within our ministry and within our mission. We settle for the least we can do rather than dreaming about the more we could do. We regard our “wealth” as our own rather than as a trust from God and instead of using that wealth to make friends – by finding ways to reach out and engage those around us – we concern ourselves more with how to keep it and protect it rather than being generous with it and using it to serve God. Individual Christian do it; congregations do it. “We can’t just give ourselves away for the sake of – well – them. We’d be taking a chance; we’d be making a sacrifice. That wouldn’t be fair to us.”

     Well - Robb McCoy (the pastor of Two Rivers United Methodist Church in Rock Island, Illinois) wrote that “The Kingdom of God has little to do with fairness. It has little to do with keeping proper ledgers and making sure that everyone gets what is their due.  The Kingdom of God is about relationships.   It is about reconciliation.   It is about forgiving our debts, as we forgive our debtors.   It is not an easy story to hear. It is sometimes an even harder story to live. It doesn’t make good economic sense. Jesus had a funny way of not making  sense.” Maybe what McCoy wrote explains why my initial reaction to this parable was “Say what?” At least at first glance, it doesn't make sense – and we expect Jesus to make sense! But, then again, God's grace doesn't make sense either. It wipes the slate clean and cancels our debts. It's God pouring out everything for us and asking for virtually nothing, except that God asks us to pour out blessings on others. Say what? That makes no sense. But it's true. We’re to take the grace that God has entrusted us with and literally give it away for the sake of those who need it.

A Thought For The Week Of September 12, 2016

"The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel." (Proverbs 12:10) It's obvious that those who were inspired to write the words of Scripture had a very clear understanding of human nature. This verse is a prime example of that. This is a concept that has actually been proven by psychological research to be true: good people are kind to animals, and cruelty often shows itself first in how we treat animals. It's known, for example, that those who in adulthood are violent toward people often began as abusers of animals when they were children. I actually find that this reminds me a great deal of the principle that Jesus offered with these words: "whatever you do for [or to] the least of these you do for [or to] me." In other words, how we treat the weak and vulnerable among us - those who can't defend themselves against us - is a sign of the attitude we hold toward God as well. Or you could also point to Jesus' teaching that if a person can't be trusted with small things then they certainly can't be trusted with big things. Thinking about that in the ight of this verse, animals - and especially domesticated animals - are virtually helpless. How we treat them is a sign not just of how humane we are; it's a sign of our basic humanity and of our closeness to God. I admit that I've always had a visceral reaction to those who abuse either animals or children - because they're basically cowards who target those who are totally unable to defend themselves. And this idea translates on to a larger scale as well. As a society we need to ensure that the helpless among us are defended, whether by laws protecting animals and children and other vulnerable people from abuse, or whether by programs that help those who for whatever reason simply seem unable to help themselves. To commit to such things isn't a political act; it's a sign of our faith. Our love for those who are the most vulnerable among us is a demonstration of our love for Jesus.

September 11, 2016 sermon: The Christian Hope: Saved From Or Saved For

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

(1 Timothy 1:12-17)

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     Hope is a very strange thing. There's the story of a plane that was making a trans-Atlantic flight. As they were partway through their journey, the captain's voice suddenly came over the intercom: “Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain. I don't want to alarm anyone, but I have to advice you that one of our plane's four engines is no longer working. There's nothing to be alarmed about. The plane is perfectly capable of flying with three engines, but we are going to be 15 minutes late arriving at our destination.” The flight continued. A little while later, the intercom came alive again, and the passengers heard, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain again. Please don't be alarmed, but we have a second engine that has stopped working. This isn't a problem because the plane can fly with two engines. But we are now going to be a half hour late arriving at our destination.” The flight continued. A while later the intercom crackled to life again: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. I regret having to tell you that a third engine has stopped working. There's no reason for concern, because this plane is designed to fly with just one engine. But I want you to know that we are now going to be one hour late arriving at our destination.” As the intercom went silent, one man turned to the passenger beside him and said, “First it was 15 minutes, then a half hour, now and hour. I sure hope that last engine is all right, because if it stops working we'll never get back on the ground!” Yes, indeed – hope is a strange thing. Sometimes we find hope when there seems to be no reason for hope. At other times we fall into despair even though reasons for hope abound. Hope is a strange thing, and we don't know quite what to do with it.

     Christian hope is a strange and even sometimes unsettling thing. As Christians we've usually tied the concept of hope into the idea of salvation – which is exactly what's stated in this passage: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”  Those words are hopeful in that they remind us that God’s love and grace and mercy are so powerful that we can be forgiven no matter what's in our past; no matter what we’ve done. This passage got me thinking about the concept of salvation or “being saved.” In the United Church we don't talk in those terms very much because we're generally uncomfortable with the way those words are often used. They can become sort of like a hammer to hit someone with or an accusation to make against someone. When someone asks “are you saved” it usually isn't a question – it's usually an expression of doubt about someone's faith and their relationship with God. So I started to think: is there a way to reclaim the concept of being saved in a way that both honours the gospel and takes away the baggage connected to the concept. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that in general terms you can think of being saved in two ways: you can either be saved from something or you can be saved for something. Which of those we choose says a lot about how we view the gospel and the work of Christ and the Christian hope. So I wondered:

     Is our faith based on fear or is our faith based on assurance? When we think of the word “saved” if our first idea is that we're being saved “from” something then we're explicitly basing our faith on fear. We must be afraid of something. We have to be saved from something. People think of being saved from sin, or saved from death or saved from hell – but one way or another there's an assumption that we have to be afraid of something, and that our faith is primarily about saving us from that thing that we're afraid of. And yet, as we listen to the words of Jesus, we hear him over and over again say things like “do not be afraid.” For far too many people the image of Christianity is of pulpit and Bible thumping preachers essentially issuing threats to those who are listening (and maybe even more to those who aren't listening) about what's going to happen to them if they don't get saved. That also tends to take things out of God's hands and put them squarely into our hands – because if we have to “get saved” then there must be something we have to do to earn it. That's essentially a works-based faith that offers no assurance, because we can never be sure that we've done exactly the right thing in exactly the right way. It ca also paralyze us by making us afraid that we might do the wrong thing, and so we choose not to do anything. Fear does that. Fear not only saps the joy out of living, it makes us rather useless to anyone else because it makes us afraid to do anything. Which then made me wonder:

     Is our faith based on what it does for us or is our faith based on what it challenges us to do for others? Am I in this just for myself? Do I believe in Jesus only because I think I'm going to get some really neat reward for what I believe? If a faith based on fear is primarily about keeping me out of hell, then a faith based on what I get from it is primarily about getting me into heaven! It's all about me, in other words. A faith that's based on what I get out of it is also satisfied with what I get out of it. It's that type of attitude that helps give birth to the criticism that often gets made of Christians: that we're so heavenly-minded we're of no earthly use. Now, that attitude might suit the general tenor of the times, but I'm not sure at all that it matches up with anything that Jesus ever taught. I think that faith is supposed to inspire us. Our faith isn't so much about heaven, you see, it's about earth. Our faith isn't about sitting back and waiting for a divine reward; it's about getting up and getting out into the world and engaging in a divine calling to bring good news to those who in this life don't have much good news. It's not about me; it's about you. It's not about us; it's about them. It's not about the self; it's about the other. Because that's where Jesus was always focused. Essentially, it all boils down to this:

     Is our faith about a God who loves us and offers us grace, or is it about a God who sits back and looks for reasons to punish us? I believe in a God of love. I believe in a God of grace.  The author of 1 Timothy could write “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the foremost,” because he had been released from fear and he had been released from the desire for reward and now he could focus on putting the will of God into practice through his own life. What this all reminds me is that I have to accept that the depth of God’s grace is a mystery that I can’t fully understand, but that I have to celebrate it not so much for its impact on both my life but for the way it frees me to impact the lives of those around me.

     Mary Hinkle Shore wrote that “saving ... is not moving a name from one column to another. Saving is certainly not ignoring sin and the harm it does. Saving is re-commissioning someone for new work. It is taking a persecutor of the church and turning him into an ambassador of Christ. Saving is the human equivalent of fashioning swords into plowshares.” To really be saved in the way that Mary Shore describes is not to be saved from something – it is to be saved for something. To be saved for something is a positive thing. To be saved in this way means to be given a purpose in this life. It means that this life isn't only – as I've heard some people describe it – a rehearsal for heaven. This life is meaningful, because it's in this life that we have the ability to touch the lives of others and to make those lives more enjoyable and more meaningful. That is our hope as Christians: that we're going to be able to make a change for the better in the lives of those we encounter. That's what we've been saved for.

A Thought For The Week Of September 5

We "have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." (Colossians 3:10) The idea of renewal is not an uncommon one for Christians. In fact, it's fair to see that we understand the work of God as being to renew the creation - which means all of creation, including us. But I find this an interesting way of phrasing things: "that we are being "renewed in knowledge after the image of [God.]" We are being constantly changed, and apparently one thing that is being changed is our knowledge. I wonder if this means that we are coming to know more, or that we are coming to know in a different way? Certainly as our relationship with God deepens, we come to a better understanding of God's ways and God's priorities and God's plans and God's calling on our lives. This type of renewed knowledge (a better understanding of God) impacts the way we relate to everything around us. First, this renewed knowledge humbles us. Sometimes knowledge can puff us up and make us think that we actually know more than we really do. But to be renewed in knowledge in this way is a humbling thing - reminding us that, in fact, our human knowledge is very limited and that true knowledge and true wisdom only come from our relationship with and our closeness to God. This closeness to God results in a new self - and fills us with the knowledge that we must never be satisfied with the way things are (whether with ourselves or with the world) and that we must be constantly striving to create at least a vision of God's Kingdom on earth. This new self is constantly learning, constantly growing and constantly becoming more deeply intimate with the God who calls to us. This impacts our entire life, by reminding us that - as much as our society sometimes tells us otherwise - it's not always about us. Its about God; it's about others. Being renewed in knowledge forces us to look at the world through a different lens - and allows us to see ourselves and those around us as God sees us and as God wants us to be. It helps us look for the best rather than the worst; it encourages us to see possibilities rather than limits.